Different electronic devices have been used to measure the time between two electronic pulses, but solutions are expensive if the application requires high accuracy. Finding more flexible and inexpensive solutions would open new markets to a wider array of users and applications, such as ranging distance from an object to a vehicle, parking sensors to determine when vehicles are in a parking space, etc.
A Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) is a pair of functional blocks commonly used in high speed communications. These blocks convert data between serial data and parallel interfaces in each direction. The generic SerDes has two functions, the Parallel-to-Serial converter, sometimes called the Parallel In Serial Out (PISO) block, and the Serial to Parallel converter, sometimes called the Serial In Parallel Out (SIPO) block. The SIPO block has a serial clock and data inputs. The serial clock may have been recovered from the data stream using a clock recovery technique. The SIPO block then divides the incoming clock down to the parallel rate.
SerDes are commonly embedded in many digital devices, or can be used as a separate electronic component. Using the embedded capabilities of the SerDes for processing digital inputs at a high rate to facilitate accurate time measurements would enable new applications requiring precise timing built at a lower cost. Therefore there is a need to use the high speed processing of digital input data embedded in the SerDes to quantify the time between two digital events, such as two pulses.